Good Morning, Broncos fans! In FO's Audibles column, Tom Gower points out the Broncos had an illegal formation (only six on the LOS) for their game-winning play. Did I say something yesterday about the breaks going against Denver? Here's a story on the same from the DP, including a screenshot.

Of course, this is a rather nitpicky point, and it pales in comparison to the blown lateral call which had the very real potential of costing Denver the game. To think, that mistake (and subsequent Pittsburgh TD) in concert with a different result on the OT coin toss, and we instead could all be rightfully bitching for the next several months over how the Broncos got jobbed. Or, the officials could have called back the touchdown, Denver could have lost, and again we'd be stuck focusing on the lateral non-call. Just another reminder that it usually often comes down to a little bit of luck.

The Broncos’ unexpected success in 2011 has helped their coordinators become hot head coaching candidates. According to a league source, the St. Louis Rams formally asked the Broncos’ permission today to interview Dennis Allen, Denver’s first-year defensive coordinator.

With the Broncos preparing for their second-round AFC playoff game Saturday at New England, the team has said Allen and McCoy can be interviewed for the head coaching positions, but not until Thursday afternoon.

They did it. They shocked me, and I’ve got a lot of company. It might not have been a great passing performance, but it was a very good one with multiple long receptions. The Steelers were down to their starting QB limping and their starting RB out as well as some line problems, and that’s a shame, because I think that on that day, Denver would have beaten them, healthy or not. The whole team talked about it all week long - this isn’t about some QB. This is the Denver Broncos, they were at home in the playoffs, they earned it, and ending the regular season with three losses wasn’t making anyone in that locker room happy. The team came out of the runway and ran straight into history. I can’t imagine anyone complaining about the pass protection - the OL gave Tim Tebow lots of time, and while he didn’t complete for a high percentage, he threw big passes. Sometime I think he likes it that way. Beating Pittsburgh, at home, after the last time Denver faced them in the playoffs, was special. Winning in overtime at home is even more so.

One thing that I really liked (and there were many) was David Bruton’s performance. He kept his gap discipline on the Pittsburgh 17-yard run in the fourth quarter: the run was not directly inside his gap, but two or three three techniques over. He immediately saw that there was no defender, took off from a full stop and built speed quickly: he took a good angle to make the tackle, downfield or not, and with his speed, he kept it out of the endzone. He had a half-dozen good plays over the course of the day. I’ve always believed that Bruton has what it takes to make it as a starting safety. Yesterday suggested the same thing.

Well, on Sunday Tebow delivered one of the finest performances a quarterback has delivered in recent memory. Not in some intangible quality — leadership, heart, grit, you name it, whatever — but an actual quantifiably great game.

One game doesn’t make a career. For all we know, we might have just seen the best passing performance of Tim Tebow’s life, a fleeting glimpse into what could happen if Tebow got to play backup free safeties with excellent pass protection every week. With that being said, if any other rookie quarterback from the past three years put up numbers similar to what Tebow did against anything resembling the Steelers pass defense in the playoffs, we would be falling all over ourselves to describe it as the first big sign that a new franchise quarterback had arrived on the scene.

“He obviously has some inside information on that team and those players because he coached them,” Brady said during his weekly interview on Boston sports radio station WEEI. “I haven’t seen Josh yet, so I really don’t know. l think coach (Bill) Belichick has a pretty good idea of what he’s going to want Josh to do. I talked to Josh briefly, but I really haven’t had a chance to sit down with him. He’s a great coach and we’re lucky to have him. I’m excited to get back to work with him. How that plays into this week, we’ll see. We’ll try to figure that out in the next five or six days.”

Tim Tebow is like the encyclopedia salesman that gets turned down door after door, but it never sways a belief that he’ll one day make the big sale. Nothing can shake Tebow’s confidence or his competitiveness. He always looks forward to the next play, the next game, the next challenge. No outside factors affect him. Tebow has the mental makeup of a great golfer that never allows a bogey from the previous hole to linger. And every time people think the end is near, Tebow rises up and adds another incredible chapter to his young career. After performing horrendously in Week 17 at home against the Chiefs, Tebow turned around to play his best game of the season against the Steelers’ top-ranked defense.

Tebow disproved (at least temporarily) his legions of naysayers by connecting on throws against man coverage. That’s what all the experts – including, apparently, the Steelers defensive coordinator Dick LeBeau – decided he couldn’t do. Don’t blame the experts. They were simply going by what they’d seen on film the past two weeks. Credit Tebow for finally “pulling the trigger” and playing with pocket poise against the Steelers’ intentionally soft pass rush. More than that, credit his offensive coordinator, Mike McCoy, and top receiver, Demaryius Thomas.

McCoy designed some very shrewd routes against the Steelers’ coverages. Instead of going with the tight bunches and myriad crossing patterns that most coaches use to beat man coverage, he went with a barrage of outside fly routes…The idea was to use Troy Polamalu’s aggressive decision-making against him. It worked masterfully…It’s easy to criticize Taylor for the poor game, but really, this was more about Denver’s phenomenal execution.

The Chargers’ Qualcomm Stadium lease with the City expires in 2020, but each year, from Feb. 1 through April 30, the franchise can trigger an out clause and negotiate with other cities or move as it sees fit. This morning, in conjunction with Mayor Jerry Sanders’ office, the Chargers will formally announce they have no intention to exercise that option and will play its 2012 games in Qualcomm.

Marty Schottenheimer, whose last season in the NFL ended with his firing in 2007 after a 14-2 record in 2006 as coach of the San Diego Chargers, will interview Tuesday with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for their head coaching vacancy, according to league sources.

Dean Spanos fires Marty after a 14-win season, keeps Norv after his team underachieves, wins 17 total games, and misses the playoffs two straight years. How so many crappy retread guys have gotten jobs in these intervening years over Marty is beyond me.

In the aftermath of his dreadful, 6-for-22, 60-yard outing against the Chiefs, Tebow’s bosses – Elway, Fox and other powerbrokers in the organization – were in full-fledged panic mode. A couple of weeks earlier, they’d considered him their unquestioned starter heading into the 2012 season. Now, even that was open for reassessment.

Last Monday, as preparations began for the Steelers game, some radical short-term alternatives were considered. One, according to two organizational sources, involved playing Tebow only on first downs and inserting his backup, Brady Quinn, for second- and third-down plays. Another plan called for Tebow to be benched in favor of Quinn if he were to struggle early.

Silver also thinks the league shouldn't have allowed New England to hire Josh McDaniels before the Pats are out of the playoffs. He writes:

The 2011 season should be treated as a separate entity, and if a coach such as McDaniels wants to line up a new gig, it should be effective after the team in question’s final game of this season. That’s certainly the spirit of the rule that applies to players, who are saddled with a mid-October trade deadline and, after that, are at the mercy of their employers’ kind-heartedness (as Kyle Orton was in surprisingly securing his Broncos release from Elway) and a waiver system before choosing their same-season relocation scenario.

I continue to disagree with this sentiment - the Pats are free to sign Kyle McCarthy and Quan Cosby, whom Denver recently cut; the Broncos could likewise sign ex-Pats DE Eric Moore if they so desire. Why should it be any different for coaches?